Comfort food

The opening song on “Wilco (The Album)” is a bright, poppy tune called “Wilco (The Song).” It's a greeting card to the band's fans, a promissory note: When you need us, we'll be there.

Did someone stick a knife in your back? Are you being attacked? frontman Jeff Tweedy sings. If so, Wilco has a sonic shoulder for you to cry on ... Wilco will love you, baby.

If you think it's arrogant for a band to write a song about its emotional relationship with its fans, you aren't one of those fans to whom Wilco is writing. Or make that to whom Tweedy is writing.

Wilco (the band) is really Tweedy and whoever is playing behind him at the moment. Over the last 15 years and several versions of the band, its only constants have been himself and bassist John Stirratt. The current Wilco has been around for five years and is, arguably, the band at its best, particularly if you're talking about virtuosity and live performances. One viewing of the new documentary “Ashes of American Flags” ought to be ample proof of that.

The disc arrives more than 14 years after “A.M,” the debut that followed the breakup of Uncle Tupelo, the trad-country/punk band Tweedy formed with Jay Farrar near St. Louis in the early 1990s.

“Wilco (The Album)” is different from “Sky Blue Sky” (2007, the first studio album by the latest incarnation of Wilco) in several ways, but it is also like each of the six previous Wilco albums in ways both subtle and explicit. As on “Yankee Hotel” and its successor, “A Ghost Is Born,” there are moments of dissonance and distortion, even in the middle of the poppy opening track, which also sounds sprung from the “Being There” sessions.

Other pop songs recall moments from “A.M.,” “Summerteeth” and the first “Mermaid Avenue” album. The most conspicuous of those is “You and I,” Tweedy's duet with singer-songwriter Feist, which sounds handcrafted for a TV commercial for diamonds, right around Valentine's Day.

Tweedy has been writing those kinds of bubbly ditties for years, all the way back to “No Sense in Loving You” on Uncle Tupelo's “Anodyne.” They're not deep or provocative, but they require a knack, and he still has his.

That one's followed by another catchy, up-tempo song, “You Never Know,” which jumps out of the gate on a beefy roadhouse piano riff and sustains its trot for more than four minutes.

As it did on “Sky Blue Sky,” the band resembles a crack team of studio virtuosos – the kind that inhabited scores of albums in the 1970s.

Like its album, the song “Bull Black Nova” manages to resemble something we've heard before, but not quite the same way. Something familiar has been revived, rebuilt and refreshed.

DOWNLOAD THIS: “You Never Know”

HIDDEN GEM

Levon Helm

“Electric Dirt”

Dirt Farmer Music/Vanguard

½

Helm, 69, sounds irrepressible in a production that savors his singing and his beat. He's a quintessential roadhouse drummer, wielding countless subtleties behind every shuffle, while his voice is vigorous and unbridled, with its Arkansas drawl intact as he bends notes toward the blues and the backwoods.

He's singing, more often than not, about woes and loss, but with enough spunk and faith to greet them undaunted.

DOWNLOAD THIS: “Kingfish”

– JON PARELES

MUSIC TOP 10

POP/ROCK ALBUMS

1. The E.N.D. — The Black Eyed Peas

2. Lines, Vines And Trying Times — Jonas Brothers

3. Far — Regina Spektor

4. Big Whiskey And The Groo Grux King — Dave Matthews Band

5. Relapse — Eminem

6. Black Clouds & Silver Linings — Dream Theater

7. Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen: The Album — Soundtrack

8. The Fame — Lady Gaga

9. A Man's Thoughts — Ginuwine

10. Hannah Montana: The Movie — Soundtrack

Cam'ron

“Crime Pays”

Asylum

This is Cam'ron circa 2009, the Harlem-based MC at his raw-knuckled best shifting his concerns from the penthouse to the pavements without missing a step.

While there are delicious examples of Cam's usual street-swaggering gamesmanship (a foul “Where I Know You From”), cocksureness (“Who”), and misanthropic romanticism (“Cookies-N-Apple Juice”), his blue-collar approach to rap, rhythm and melody finds him at his fighting best.

Download this: “Who”

– A.D. AMOROSI

Moby

“Wait for Me”

Mute

Following his homage to the dance floor on 2008's “Last Night,” Moby returns with a melodic, atmospheric effort. Moby has said this is a personal record – the one he wanted to make, not the one he was expected to.

The idea doesn't take him outside his established sound, but while “Last Night” was an eclectic and rousing collection, “Wait for Me” softly flows as a cohesive work. It's a haunting collection, but it probably won't give Moby a huge chart hit.

Download this: “Mistake”

– JOHN KOSIK

Rob Thomas

“Cradlesong”

(Emblem/Atlantic)

½

Good for Rob Thomas for thinking outside the, um, matchbox, but he really should have left much of this album in the studio. His vocals and lyrics are uniquely suited to soul-searching, adult contemporary rockers.

Sure, a little stretching can be effective, as in the gospel-tinged first single, “Her Diamonds.” But when Thomas strays too far – How do you drink when there's blood in the water? he asks in the protesty “Fire on the Mountain” – it's almost laughable. Download this: “Her Diamonds”